ANNAPOLIS, Md. — When you drive down Admiral Drive in Annapolis, you might see the face of Jesse Byrd smiling down at you. It's a smile his mother, Debbie Santini, misses every day.
"Everybody who knows Jesse knows this smile that he had," Santini said.
When he was 16, Byrd was severely injured in a car crash.
"Nobody ever told me - no doctor or nurse ever came to me and said, 'hey mom, this is what we're giving your son. It's highly addictive, it's an opioid, and these are the signs you need to look for,'" Santini said.
Byrd struggled with addiction for the next several years, spending time in and out of treatment facilities.
January of 2022 was a turning point. Santini recalls her son waking up one morning and deciding it was time to turn his life around.
He spent a month in inpatient treatment, and then transitioned into a recovery house on February 11.
"I saw him Saturday, February 12. He was fine, he was happy. He got his haircut, he was looking forward to getting his life back on track, and going back to work," Santini said.
Just a few days later, Byrd's boss contacted Santini, concerned that he hadn't show up for work that morning. She frantically called and texted her son, and the manager of the recovery house.
Finally, an answer. But the person on the other line of Byrd's phone was a police officer.
"I said, 'where's my son? Where's my baby?' And all I heard was, 'I'm sorry to inform you,' and that's all I heard," Santini said.
To this day, she still doesn't know exactly what happened. All she knows for sure is that Byrd was found dead in his bed in the recovery home, killed by fentanyl poisoning.
She's still fighting for answers, and fighting for other people's children. That's how she came up with the idea for the billboard.
"I want them to know if they need a recovery house, and they don't know where to turn, there's a number on the billboard that they can call and we can provide them resources. You know, what are the questions to ask: is there a buddy policy? We need to do bed checks and check on everybody. 10 people in a house and somebody dying isn't ok," Santini said.
She also participates in a lot of advocacy work, including with an organization called "Lost Voices of Fentanyl." They're holding an event tonight in Annapolis for International Overdose Awareness Day.
"You can't bring my son back. But we're doing this for other people, so that they know. Because there's still people out there that don't know about fentanyl," Santini said.
